


Eternity

by FreeShavocadoo



Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Death, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, M/M, Pining, Romantic Angst, The only way to describe them both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 02:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18769423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeShavocadoo/pseuds/FreeShavocadoo
Summary: “You were there,” Carrillo’s eyes stare holes into Pen͂a’s head, as though his is the only opinion in the room that matters, “you trust her?”Pen͂a thinks of the girl, so slight and timid but with a fear so deep it ran straight into anger. He’s seen that look on many people over the years in Medellin, the shaking hands and the darting eyes. It wasn’t that Pen͂a was paranoid, though by this point he would probably be better off for it, it was more that he had to trust his own gut instinct in the situation. Which meant that Carrillo would inevitably take his judgement as being reliable. There in lay the problem. Maritza seemed like a sweet girl, a scared and vulnerable girl who had a daughter to think about.“I do.” Pen͂a replies softly, maintaining eye contact with Carrillo, who’s jaw is set tighter than usual, as though he’s going against his instincts.





	Eternity

“You were there,” Carrillo’s eyes stare holes into Pen͂a’s head, as though his is the only opinion in the room that matters, “you trust her?”

Pen͂a thinks of the girl, so slight and timid but with a fear so deep it ran straight into anger. He’s seen that look on many people over the years in Medellin, the shaking hands and the darting eyes. It wasn’t that Pen͂a was paranoid, though by this point he would probably be better off for it, it was more that he had to trust his own gut instinct in the situation. Which meant that Carrillo would inevitably take his judgement as being reliable. There in lay the problem. Maritza seemed like a sweet girl, a scared and vulnerable girl who had a daughter to think about.

“I do.” Pen͂a replies softly, maintaining eye contact with Carrillo, who’s jaw is set tighter than usual, as though he’s going against his instincts.

 _I should’ve known_ , Pen͂a thinks, _I should’ve known that was a sign it was all going to go to shit._

“Okay.” Steve’s voice is distant to Pen͂a, practically unintelligible as he stares at Carrillo until unease in his stomach becomes more prominent.

The afternoon seems to drag by, with an endless stream of typewriting and conversations Pen͂a feels like he’s viewing rather than engaging in. It’s like an out of body experience, only being able to see dark eyes staring so intensely, so trustingly at him. No different from his usual routine, Pen͂a lets himself finish earlier, giving Steve a grumbled reply when he gets a scathing look. He finds Carrillo outside.

“Colonel,” he tries not to rush over too hastily, but the way Carrillo stares at him with gentle bemusement is enough to tell him he wasn’t trying hard enough, “a moment?”

“Yes, agent Pen͂a?” Carrillo’s voice is pure velvet, his eyes now a delicate balance of amusement and concentration, always so focused that it made Pen͂a feel an embarrassment he wasn’t sure he’d ever really felt with anyone else before.

“The plan-,” he begins, Carrillo lifting his hand up to interrupt him, always so assertive.

“You said you trust her word. And I trust yours.” He says simply, putting his aviators on as the sun begins to glare down on them both, casting warmth across the parking lot and making Carrillo look ethereal, unreal and irresistible.

“But-,” Pen͂a tries to come up with the words to tell Carrillo, to tell him that he can’t have anything happening to him on his conscience. He already struggles to live with himself, but Carrillo is his crutch and that would be damage he could never hope to recover from, and it would be of his own doing.

“Don’t.” Carrillo’s gaze is somehow still present even through his sunglasses, as unwavering as ever. “Whatever is meant to happen, will happen. Don’t be as arrogant to assume that you can change the course of fate, Javier.”

Against all of the unease he’s feeling, he laughs softly. Carrillo gently squeezes his arm, a touch so brief but still enough to make Pen͂a feel safe and less anxious.

“Then, good luck,” Pen͂a moves his hand over Carrillo’s and Carrillo takes the opportunity to lift Pen͂a’s hand to gently brush his lips against it, “Horacio.”

“Thank you, Javier.” He says, as though anything about that interaction, or any of their interactions, was normal or platonic.

He watches the car pull out of the parking lot, until it goes so far down the street, he can no longer see it.

 

* * *

 

 

No amount of training ever prepares you for when it all goes wrong. When the radio starts shorting out because people are yelling, gunfire is rattling and Spanish and English both sound foreign. It’s hard to even distinguish who is radioing in, who it is that’s telling them it’s an ambush in a voice so frantic Pen͂a feels like he can feel the bullets whistling past his own head.

“Carrillo?” He tries to stay calm over the radio, the commotion in the room hard to distance from the commotion on the other side of Medellin coming through the radio. “Carrillo!”

He can feel the panic welling inside him, the panic that had settled since Medina had told him he wasn’t allowed to go on another raid, as he’d watched Carrillo walk out of the door. He can remember the brief glance Carrillo gave him, the way his eyes flickered down momentarily before he walked down the corridor. Pen͂a thought he was invincible.

Nobody answers the radio after another hail of gunfire seems to render the entire room silent, only able to hear the odds and ends of utter decimation. Reinforcements are on their way to the scene, apparently flooding every corner before the sicarios have a chance to start moving down the entire street, as though they hadn’t already riddled every single car with bullets.

The entire car journey there only furthers his belief that he got a good man, the best man he’d ever known on this job, brutally murdered. He can still see the fleeting glance as Carrillo had left the room. Had he known what he was about to walk into? Did he think this time, the way he had many other times as he’d told Pen͂a over drinks, that it was the last? He’d always said that every time he walked out of the door, he had to settle the fact that he might not walk back through it with himself.

 _How am I meant to settle that with myself?_ He thinks, _how am I meant to live with that?_

“I know what you’re thinking,” Steve says, softer than usual, “but it wasn’t your fault. It’s on Escobar, and one way or another, he pays.”

“We all do.” Pen͂a replies, staring at the destruction in front of him, the smoke still billowing from bullet-riddled cars. "Don't we?"

The destruction was so excessive, so unnecessary for an ambush. Pen͂a wonders if Carrillo felt any fear in the moment, when the first car went up in flames. But then he remembers that Horacio Carrillo was a man of purpose, and he was most likely resolute in every possible way about what he’d done to get to this point until his last breath.

Steve gets into the ambulance and Pen͂a can’t bear to look at the shape of a man, a man he’d longed and yearned for, splattered in blood and riddled with bullets. He doesn’t want to see a face frozen in an eternal emotion he can’t fathom, with eyes that aren’t swirling with an intensity too brazen to look at, or twinkling as though he’s always had the last laugh. He couldn’t bear to.

 

* * *

 

 

The knock on his door barely breaks him from his drunken stupor, sat on his couch surrounded by empty bottles and glasses, a blanket strewn haphazardly over his half-naked body. Had it been hours? Days? He thinks it’s been three days, judging by the bottles, anyway. With everything that had gone on, funeral arrangements and speeches that barely filled a fraction of the void left behind by Carrillo, they were all events Pen͂a could happily miss. The knocking becomes more aggressive, leading Pen͂a to move his hand to his gun and slowly shuffle towards the door. His vision is swimming, the grip on his gun is laughable, yet the anger and anguish in his gut makes him care little.

The door swings open, Pen͂a’s hand moving up with the gun to a shadow, a strong and tall shadow.

“Javier,” the voice is unmistakable, the voice that had haunted his dreams long before the events of a few nights ago, “hurry up and let me in.”

_How much have I had to drink?_

The warmth of the hand on his lower back tells him he’s not dreaming, rough and calloused fingertips but gentle movements. He’s guided to the sofa, as though he’s the one back from the dead.

“Javier,” Carrillo’s hands grasp his cheeks firmly, moving his face to look at the man he adored so much it hurt him, “look at me.”

Pen͂a doesn’t think when he lunges forward, face pressed into the crook of Carrillo’s neck like he’s a lifeline, fingers curled into his hair as he squeezes him to make sure he’s real. Carrillo, as always, grounds him, stroking down his back and whispering to him quietly.

“How?” Pen͂a’s voice is weak from his half-sobs, raspy from the alcohol.

“An ambush seemed inevitable. So, I took precautions and had some of my men check ahead the night before the raid.” His voice sounds distant, as though this memory is hard for him to recollect. “When I’d realised they intended to trap me, I made a plan.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Pen͂a asks, less furious and more longing. “You could’ve warned me.”

“I only told a few select men. That’s on me,” he replies, “it was only meant to be me getting hit with blanks by one of my men on the unguarded rooftops, me being covered in blood that wasn’t even my own. And it worked.”

He pauses, his fingers curled in Pen͂a’s hair as he strokes it absent-mindedly. “But some of my men still died. We hadn’t anticipated how far he was willing to go. If reinforcements were a second later, I’d have been dead. I was lucky I’d avoided a real bullet.”

He kisses Pen͂a’s jaw, delicate and tender, tightening his grip on the back of Pen͂a’s neck as he kisses him slowly. It’s not like other kisses they’ve shared, from the aggressive and frantic to the lazy and careless. It was pure need and longing, Pen͂a’s head no longer fuzzy from the alcohol but clouded by the man in front of him, all hard muscle and strong resolve, perfection.

“What are you going to do now?” Pen͂a asks, breathless and dizzy, crawling onto Carrillo’s lap with reckless abandon to mould himself into him like a second skin.

“What I’d always intended to. Kill Escobar.” He says, eyes black and mouth hard, until he looks at Pen͂a and his eyes soften considerably. “I will always be here with you. Always.”

“No, you won’t.” Pen͂a’s voice is thick with emotion, weighed down by it. “That scares me.”

“If someone is always in your thoughts, then they will always be in your memories,” Carrillo moves his hand to grasp Pen͂a’s firmly, “and they will therefore live with you for eternity.”

Pen͂a is always at a loss for words when it comes to Carrillo, no more than when the man speaks so freely and beautifully without trying, poetic and resolute. He shifts closer, sliding his arms around Carrillo’s shoulders as he holds him closely from his position on Carrillo’s lap, still feeling like even with Carrillo’s breath against his ear it will never be close enough. Carrillo picks him up like he’s weightless, carrying him to his bed that is removed from the debauchery of his other living space, due to his sleepless nights on the sofa. When he’s lowered onto the soft mattress, Carrillo’s reassuring weight is beside him once more, strong arms wrapped around him from behind.

“I do not deserve you, Javier Pen͂a.” He murmurs into Pen͂a’s ear, making his heart stop and his breath cease. “I never will.”

Pen͂a doesn’t think anyone has ever told him he was good for anything that was worth something. It makes him vulnerable in a way that is utter perfection, every inch of skin humming from the warmth of Carrillo’s strong and unmovable body.

“You always will.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love angst but even I refuse to acknowledge any ending with these two that isn't them riding off into the sunset to become vigilantes. Okay? Okay


End file.
